The Canine Guru’s Guide to Surviving Loneliness

Being human can be a lonely business. 

1987. In answer to the question, does true love exist? My father stroked his beard (for so long I thought he’d gone back on his edict of, ‘say no to drugs’) and replied, “You’re born alone; you die alone. Might as well get used to it.”

Perhaps rather nihilistic advice to give to a fifteen-year-old, who hoped life might turn out like her favourite film, Dirty Dancing, but for some reason, I found comfort in it. If all the anthropologists were wrong and my Dad was right, then there was less pressure to succeed in finding a mate. Bonnie Tyler could keep her rock ballad. I didn’t need a hero; I just needed me. It was only later in life that I realised he wasn’t trying to build a feminist, he simply had a distorted attitude towards relationships, because his parents had shipped him off to boarding school in another country, at the age of six, for no other reason than pure malice. 

So, based on the words of a six-year-old trapped in a fifty-year-old’s body, I breezed through life, not needing anyone. I lived alone as soon as I could, left parties early, walked out on relationships that felt too cosy. I was a lone wolf, a free bird, a total dick. 

There were upsides to not fully engaging with others. Loneliness, that paunchy travelling salesman with his briefcase of doom, walked past my life but couldn’t get my attention.

“This solitary place is my home too,” he’d yell at the closed window. 

I would tralalala back like Snow White. 

“Not lonely if you like being alone. Move along, you’re blocking my view of an emotionless existence.”  

Then, in my thirties, I made a critical error; I let my guard down, got married and had children. Suddenly, I was a soft underbellied earth mother, determined to give the kids the childhood I hadn’t had.

Please don’t think I am ungrateful for my youth; it was a glorious and feral adventure, but there wasn’t much in the way of parental interaction. My father was always on tour, singing for our supper, (literally) and my mother did her best with the limited tools she had, such as the two nannies and boarding schools. I was eight when I unpacked my trunk for the first time, in a dormitory full of equally scared children. A thought struck me, ‘we are not in war time, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t kill my brother during our last fight, so why am I being incarcerated?’ 

My kids were going to have a brilliant childhood, chock-full of epic walks, story reading, drawing on the kitchen table, movie nights and daily school pick-ups, instead of (at times abusive) employees and occasional weekends out for good behaviour. 

When these little humans came into my life, they taught me about love and joy, and how to have both without a cigarette or a glass of wine in your hand. I was enthralled. It felt like I’d opened a vault containing secret papers that were crucial to existence. I was the Dan Brown of the parenting world. But there’s a price to pay for such intel; you have to leave the door to your soul open. No option, it’s just part of the deal. And an open door invites unwanted visitors.

First came Trust: a dim-witted cuddly bear, who waddled in and hopped up on to the couch, all smiles. Right behind him, standing on the threshold, one foot in the doorway, waiting for an excuse to come in, was Loneliness. Smiling to himself, he removed his trilby and whistled a jaunty tune. I ignored his presence. 

The smarmy git didn’t have to wait long to step inside, because my husband and I split when the kids were small. I can’t blame him really. Counsellors say that the key to freeing yourself is to take responsibility for what happened. Well, OK, I’ll admit it, perhaps marrying a war journalist, who makes Bear Grylls look like a pussy was probably not the right choice for a life of Netflix and chill. I once asked him where he’d been most happy and he said, “In a burnt-out hospital in Syria.” (For the record, he’s a good Dad. As I type, he’s taking the kids on an eight-mile hike, where my son will probably kill their picnic meat in the woods and passers-by will run a mile). 

Without much warning, I was in charge of raising two small people in the rounded, wholesome way I swore I would. None of my baggage was going to be passed to them, god damn it. I tried to focus on being a better version of myself, but I had Loneliness staying with us. Does that guy ever sleep? He’d sit up with me through the long nights jabbering away. 

“Just wondering how you ended up living with two dependents and no one to laugh with about the day’s insanity?”

“You know you’re in the worst possible position, right? I mean you live in a small town, where everyone’s married. You can’t go anywhere because your kids need you.”

“Gosh, I’d say you’re done for.”

I covered my head with a pillow. 

How about you? What does your loneliness look like? Perhaps you’re single, or a teenager in a home where no one really ‘sees’ you; a grandparent (now unpaid babysitter) in a family home that used to be noisy with your own kids; a student, living in a shared house; or just sitting on the spare-room bed in a loveless marriage. Let’s face it, we all know this travelling salesman with his briefcase of nothingness.  

My daughter must have spotted him snoozing on the couch, because two years after the divorce she whispered that she wanted me to start dating again.

“So that you can have someone, like Dad does. It’s time,” she said, patting my arm. 

Not wanting her to worry that she’d be my crutch forever, I agreed, and valiantly stepped out into the world of internet dating.  

Before my ex-husband, I’d collided with men naturally, in all the normal places: university, work, some dingy nightclub in King’s Cross where the toilet walls seemed to be sweating. That was a time before fillers and filters, before our phones chose for us. I held my algorithm-run friend in the palm of my hand and marvelled at the smorgasbord of fellow lonely humans all pretending to be otherwise.  

I threw myself into the role of finding someone to make me visible to the adult population again. Just think, if I had a partner, couples would invite me to dinner parties more often; some of the mothers would stop eyeing me like they were preparing to sing Dolly Parton’s Jolene in my face, at the school summer fayre; people would stop asking how I really was, with their heads cocked to one side, as if to say, ‘nothing will convince me you’re anything other than a husk of a person.’

I responded to every man who messaged me, even the no-neck trucker, who asked if I was a lesbian for not wanting to travel to Calais with him and eat (his) cheese en route. 

A friend, with some experience of this brave new world, could see I was spiralling. She took me to one side at a party.

“Listen J.J., you have to be more discerning, only respond to the men you’re actually interested in. You’re not there to make friends.” 

With that in mind, I applied lipstick and went out to definitely not make friends. But something had happened to the human race while I was indoors ageing. 

Date one: Sitting in a chandeliered London hotel bar, my potential soul mate leant forward, played with his monogrammed cufflinks and asked if he could confide in me. 

“Of course,” I said, “anything.” (Thinking: honest, sensitive and handsome…result). 

“My fiancée died…a month ago.”

I widened my eyes to express both sympathy and horror – a fine balance. 

“And I’ve worked out one way to deal with the grief.”

I was all ears. I mean, it was a bit soon to be meeting other women, but grief makes you do crazy things, I should know.

He proceeded to share that his recovery involved sniffing his date’s underwear, which most women were normally kind enough to remove for him. 

“In the bathroom, just behind you, you know, for the grief.”

It was a one drink date. 

When the bill arrived, he told me that he only paid with (an alarmingly large wad of) cash, because he wanted to avoid fraud. I pointed out that perhaps it was also because he didn’t want his undead girlfriend to find out he liked sniffing strangers’ knickers in five-star hotel toilets.  

How could I question his moral standing? What kind of a woman would accuse a monogrammed motherfucker of lying? He was so flustered I almost felt sorry for him, until he had the audacity to tell me that I was scaring him. 

Then there was the man who said he was trying to, “be like Benetton, and cover all the colours of the globe.” I was lucky to be the chosen, “White one. Although you do look a bit yellow.” I was tempted to tell him it was due to all the turmeric and ashwagandha I was taking to try to calm my nerves. 

Oh, and let’s not forget the professional angler who hated his ex-wife so much, “I could kill her.” I was just glad he didn’t ask me to do it.

I did meet some amazing people along the way, who taught me so much about how to live again, but it wasn’t long before I retreated to my happy place of solitude. 

“Well, that was a disaster,” said Loneliness. “Probably best if you and I just stay here and wait for death. Waddya say? I’ve got some great brochures on Friedrich Nietzsche.”

But I had a secret weapon waiting around the corner, or rather at a breeder’s in Ashford, Kent. I told Loneliness I was popping out to buy razor blades. He agreed that was a smart move, and then the kids and I came back with a puppy. Weighing in at 1.8Kgs, Inca bounded into our house and snarled at the interloper, who left without picking up his leaflets on abandonment issues. 

I grew up with dogs; bulldogs to be precise (small confession: my son is named after my favourite), but I was never the type to anthropomorphise our adorable pets. I used to think my father was mad, the way he spoke to his dog as if she were human. 

“What do you think, Boris, will England win the World Cup? ‘Fat chance’, you say?” My poor delusional parent. 

What a fool I’d been to mock him. Within a few short weeks of bringing Inca home I began to ask his opinion on the outfits I wore, what to cook for supper, lottery numbers. I heard myself telling people how intelligent he was, as he ran into the cycle path on the sea front in pursuit of a bee.

No longer did I talk to the mirror; I could ask the dog. “Does my arse look big in this?” His gentle eye roll was enough to tell me I was worrying too much, that I looked sublime. Then my son came in the room. 

“Wow mum, that outfit makes you look like you have a hippo’s butt.” 

If only children could be more like dogs.

Before I knew it, I was meeting people in parks, exchanging numbers, widening my social circle, even going out on a date with a fellow dog owner. 

One morning, Pre-covid, I was driving back from dropping my son at school and I heard the most wonderful documentary on Radio 4, all about a drug addict who kicked his heroin addiction to keep a dog alive. (I tried to find it again to paste a link to it here, but sadly couldn’t. If you can, please post in the comments and I’ll add it.) By the time I parked up, with Inca laying across the handbrake, his big eyes wide with concern, I was crying at the wheel, listening to this brave man who chose life so a dog wouldn’t die. 

That got me thinking about two divorced dads I’d dated (not at the same time) who owned dogs. They told me that their mutts saved their sanity during the long weeks when they couldn’t be with their children. This may be a generalisation, but I’m not sure we give much thought to the dads who lose access to their kids in divorce. So, just for a moment I want to paws (groan) and give you my sympathy, it isn’t a natural state and it sucks. If you’re feeling the loneliness that accompanies absent children, a dog can ameliorate that wound. Plus, they never ask you for money or say “Well, Mum lets me do it.” 

I called up one of the dog dads and asked him what Mr Chops meant to him. 

“When everything goes wrong the dog is with you. He only has two emotions: longing and happiness. He can’t hold negative emotion.” Suspecting he was describing his dream woman, I nodded sagely. “It’s nice,” he said, wistfully, “if I’ve had a terrible day, he’s always there. He doesn’t want or need his own space. Why can’t all women be like dogs?”

Celebrity gardener, Monty Don, when talking about how his dog, Nigel, helped him beat depression, said, “Dogs level you, they tie you to a better reality.” I couldn’t say it better myself. 

I steal Monty’s line and share it with Inca. He looks at me like I’ve lost my mind and barks for another piece of carrot.

As usual, you can hear the audio version of the blog by scrolling back up to the top. Thank you to my brilliant agents at Another Tongue and the engineers at Another Studio who made my chattering sound smooth.